To be worn out by the mismatch between annual leave & school provision

[Yellowlegobrick]

25 days. Like most people i get 25 days annual leave.

School holidays plus inset days needs 65 days cover.

There are sod all good options to cover it locally. There'll be a football camp 20 mins away for 3 days 9 - 2.30, a forest school doing an odd week 9-3. The bigger camps are massively oversubscribed, don't run for the whole holiday and you sometimes can't get a place.

Aibu to think there needs to be a formalised, centrally managed system to acknowledge the gap and provide better coverage?

Even if DH take all our annual leave separately, we can't cover it all, especially not when we lose at least a couple of days each per year of annual leave covering days the children are ill.

Its a constant annual stress, i find myself filled with dread when the letter comes from school: end of term, finish after lunch at 1.15.... there goes another half day 🙁

How about a childcare swap with a family in the same position? You have all the kids for a week, then they have all the kids for a week?

I used to manage with this, family helping out here and there plus some very expensive holiday clubs that I had to be super organised to book in time. It was such a relief when they reached high school age.

Most of daycare round our way run summer schemes up to 11 years old but are virtually at daycare prices

That's life when you have kids and no family or friends to support. we had to to do it - only lasted a year though and then ex husband left as he begrudged using all his holiday to cover school holidays 😂

I’m going to be a real grump and say if you think it’s bad with neurotypical children, try having a child with Sen and working. There is absolutely nothing that caters for children with Sen and if you’ve got a child with complex needs you’re utterly screwed.

I feel your pain, there’s nothing here for my kids other than one or two days at an ASN hub for my DD12. Nothing accessible on a regular basis for either child and after school care is non-existent for my 12 year old because it’s considered she should be old enough to be home alone. I couldn’t work full time if I wanted to.

Something needs to change, I fear it won't until women are not the majority of people working or not that have to bridge the gap of care by reconsidering the jobs/careers they go for once children arrive or perhaps I'm just being cynical.

We were lucky, there was a full day camp DD liked and DH was able to wfh for ages already so did lots of dropping off/collecting and was also able to cover Christmas as I never get time off for this.

We also had our childminder and she was happy to do drop off/collecting from some clubs and covered the last week of August when ALL camps closed down.

As soon as DD was old enough she went for a week PGL/Scout camp.

Sharing with friends never worked for us as we needed to have everything covered by mid-February to book the camps. Inflexible as hell but the only way.

I hear you! The situation is absolutely desperate! I'm privileged enough to work part time in a fairly flexible job and I still struggle.

Bad enough having to take holidays separate to your partner but for me even worse would be having to look after someone else's children as well as my own. .
How do you work it with siblings of different ages? A swap if you have a reception child and a year 6 child isn't going to be that easy to find

A fait number of women I know were lucky enough not to have to work but for the rest of us it was a huge struggle

My children were primary age long before COVID, even people who worked in offices couldn't work at home and huge numbers even now dont have that luxury

I dont know what the answer is but I do sympathiser

The govt should be stepping up and doing something. I don’t think schools should have less holidays as the children need the down time. I’m currently a teacher, but about to leave as a ft time teacher and go on supply. I would love to work at a holiday camp that did a mixture of educational, life skills and fun activities over the summer. It could run 8:30- 5:30 and would massively help with safeguarding issues. I also worry about the children whose parents have no choice but to leave them home alone for hrs on end. As the teaching system currently stands the 6 weeks is needed by teachers to move and sort classrooms, plan for next yr and have a break, but there is probably plenty of supply teachers that would be happy to earn over the six weeks. Would also help with behaviour as children wouldn’t be up to no good.

I work in a shit paid term time only job even though I'm well qualified, for this very reason

Yep yep and yep.
Tbh it's a nightmare finding childcare for an ALN child during term time!
School holidays are a total write off

There should be more council run holiday schemes-at affordable prices. Schools have all their building work/maintenance/decorating done in the summer holidays so those sites can’t be used.

Yanbu op! It is one of the trickiest things about having children and it makes me 👀 that the Govt. are falling over themselves to provide 30 hours free childcare to get the low paid back into work ... and then fuck all when it all falls off a cliff when they reach school age. It's an unholy mess and I really can't grasp how some families on average to low incomes do it. Yanbu at all!

And the result of it all is that some children are left alone all day during the school holidays when they are definitely too young.

I purposely cultivated arrangements with mum's in the class who were in similar positions to me. We were glad to help each other out, the kids had playmates for a couple of weeks and it was fine. If you don't have anyone around who would be good candidates for this kind of arrangement, then it obviously wouldn't work, but it did for us.

We have a similar issue with the standard and easy to find 'holiday care' clubs around here, they run 1 week out of 6 or just 10-3 which is bloody useless for the vast majority who work.

What we have found though is that if you just start randomly googling and searching websites for other kid focused activities you can find alternative provision that costs a fortune but covers the hours, for whatever reason they don't advertise on any of the childcare/holiday club/council websites making them difficult to find.

Our local outdoor pursuits centre do holiday club every day, every holiday, full time hours and it's amazing, they do all kinds of really cool stuff but it's £43 a day.

Our local trampoline park do full time holiday club, found it by accident when looking at the party packages, cheaper but less variety as it's basically use the facilities to jump all day or do crafts.

The Wildlife trust do a couple of weeks mid holiday where they run full day activity sessions just for kids.

Im taking four weeks parental leave in a block this summer. Its unpaid and my manager wasn't too happy but I had zero other options.
Will probably be at the bottom of my overdraft too at the end of it plus no clue what to do at Christmas :/

Hi, it doesn't help money-wise but all parents/carers are entitled to 18weeks unpaid parental leave for each child up to their 18th birthday. Each parent can take up to 4 weeks for each child each year - though it is not well known!

https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave/entitlement

Hire a student for 5 weeksls to come each day
Advertise summer nanny locally
Whatever yes it costs

The thing is, we might be entitled to it, but our employers are not going to be best pleased, and we might find ourselves without that job somehow if we insist on this.

@greenyorange I didn't know that! X

I sympathize.

We live in Canada and there are day camps available everywhere, for every budget, from 7am-6pm.

There really ought be a lot more annual leave to match school holidays. Jobshares might be the way forward.

I took parental leave 3 weeks per year when dc were younger (nhs). I now work tto.

It is hard. My DS used to go to holiday clubs, the odd holiday away with the school and I would share time with his friends parents to cover it all.

With longer service I got a little more leave and I had Flexi time so I could top it up a little

Would one child have any less school holiday than multiple children though?

Or do you mean so you can afford a nanny/au pair?